Byline

Levelling the playing field. Separating art from the artist. Championing talent not status.

It was a winter night, my hand was wrapped around a cold pint and I was chatting to a mate about the past week’s events when, from across the table, I heard my name in discussion. A friend of mine was introducing our crew to a stranger. He described his relationship with everybody in attendance, discussing how they met and why they were important to him. However, when he reached me, he added that he knew of me before knowing who I was as a person. It was true. I knew him for years but did not speak a word to him, and I suspect he would not be alone in making this assumption. It is not the result of insolence but rather my social anxiety, which I developed in the country and carried with me to the city.

For the first few years of my degree, I was in conflict. I had so many questions. I remember battling my anxiety during tutorials, wanting so desperately to ask my burning questions but at the same time being so afraid of how they would be received. How could I be an aspiring journalist but lack the confidence required to ask important questions? For someone as curious as myself, this was infuriating. Fortunately, a byproduct of studying journalism is accumulative self-confidence. 

Entrepreneur and public speaker Tim Ferris said, “Success is measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations you are willing to have.” I am unsure if the context I am applying this to is the context in which he intended, but if success is self-confidence my journalism degree helped me achieve it. That said, I know people live like my past self, scared, worried and manifesting catastrophe, although filled with creativity and passion but without a voice to show it. Those people were the catalysts of this idea.

The plan

You hear the saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” often in my industry. But if that is the case, it suggests those who get the jobs, report the news and write the stories are less talented than those who do not. Of course, this is not entirely true, as there are many great, confident journalists – for instance, I am reading the one-eyed war correspondent Marie Colvin’s biography now, and by no means was she shy. But when you consider the talent of Emily Dickinson, perhaps the greatest poet to ever walk the Earth, who was thought to have social anxiety, perhaps why she was discovered after her death, you realise the world’s scope of hidden beauty is far too large.

Although journalism will be the heart and soul of Byline, it is not bound to it. I am determined to help more than just the budding journalist notch their first byline. I want to build a community for broad writers. These could be copywriters, novelists or poets searching for a means to distribute their journals filled with unsung lyrics.

A lived example

To know my nan, you really must know her. Walking around her flat is like walking around a vintage store. Her walls display her own art and she spends each day listening to great musicians like Leonard Cohen, using them as inspiration for her own poetry. After reading the books she borrows from her local library, she writes her newfound thoughts in a handy diary. She conjures unique tea blends using the leaves pulled from her garden, which she shares with her friends and family when they visit. She is a conduit of creativity, and if she ever shared her off-the-grid approach to life, I am confident a subreddit would celebrate it. That said, she would not dare to put her name on the internet. Anonymous or not, the exposure would be too much for her mind to handle. She thought the buzzer I was given as we waited for our coffee last week was eavesdropping on our conversation. So, my mission is to discover slightly less paranoid versions of my nan who are willing to draw public attention to their art, providing them with an opportunity to be recognised, publicly or anonymously, by the people who can make a real difference to their lives.

That said, Byline will not be limited to those who live like my nan, suffocating amongst the loud voices of those who dominate the social media world. It is for everyone, regardless of status, to have an opportunity to increase their chance of employability, embark on a creative endeavour outside of their workplace or simplify the process required to reveal their art to the world. For instance, journalists may use Byline to investigate the stories their workplace would not allow them to. Or perhaps Byline could be a means to crawl out of the journalistic niche you have dug yourself into. It is a way to showcase the resourcefulness that many of us keep hidden from the world.

Byline

There is a lot of uncertainty being a humanities student. The path forward is often unpredictable, and that is why so many of us find ourselves at a crossroads after we graduate. Journalism is increasingly becoming a tougher industry to break into. It requires more than just ability. Reporters are almost encouraged to sacrifice their privacy in the name of their profession. For some, a byline is what many writers hope to achieve, but not all writers want their name to be associated with everything they choose to release. But then again, a byline is no easy merit to achieve.

Some spend countless hours behind their laptop monitor, emptying their imagination onto a blank page, but, unfortunately, for those who dream of sharing their writing, these words will likely never be read. This is where Byline comes in. Byline will make it easier for the willing, regardless of prerequisites, confidence and reputation, to make a name for themselves, streamlining potential employment opportunities within the publishing industry. Therefore, Byline is more than a tool that authors can use to break into their chosen industry. It is a means to generate employer-employee relationships, allowing recruiters to scour the platform for the local talent closest to them.

Furthermore, building a reputation requires confidence, but confidence is a broad term. For instance, confidence could be physical, intellectual, emotional or social, and not everybody can perform in every category. Although we encourage writers to become members on their merit, Byline understands that beauty often whispers where others shout. Therefore, Byline will build a recruitment team dedicated to searching the internet for writers guaranteed to benefit from the service. Therefore, one of Byline's core purposes will be to open the first door of opportunity, addressing the hustle and making it easier for aspiring writers to build a reputation.

Anonymous

I honestly think reputation is detrimental to creativity. Reputation is not a prerequisite for creativity, it is merely a tool artists use to place their work in the public eye. Unlike a portfolio of work, the number of LinkedIn connections a person has does not accurately measure talent. Therefore, under the Anonymous category, reputation will be non-existent. In fact, all contributors must publish under an alias. This would allow writers to test the waters and discover how people respond to opinionated, romantic or perhaps twisted literature without having to deal with the drama of being associated with it.

I hope employers will search this page for writers without unintentionally being influenced by status or professional experience. If a recruiter, who will also be under an alias, stumbles across a portfolio of work that showcases skills they believe would bring value to their workplace, they must express their interest to the Byline team before they can directly talk to the writer. To Byline, they will disclose their company, its vacancy and why they believe the author would suit it. Byline would then inform the author, and if interested, create an employer-employee discourse to discuss employment opportunities in further detail. 

The only point of identification under this category will be professional status. This will help authors better analyse Byline-specific analytics, revealing the number of impressions each of their published articles received, and how many of those impressions are hiring managers.

Categorisation

Byline will not ask you to check boxes relevant to your interests, this goes directly against the platform’s purpose. We want to expose you, the employer, to vast content genres. Rather than reinforcing ideas, ideologies and opinions you are already familiar with, Byline aims to showcase diverse, quality and thought-out literature to all sorts of recruiters. The type of content unexpected to hold profitable value until exposed to it. Therefore, Byline will not exploit machine learning to display a feed compatible with interests. Instead, Byline will showcase author content, either anonymously or publicly, based solely on proximity, providing local talent with the first employment opportunity.

Nevertheless, we understand that manipulating the algorithm in such a way could hinder Byline's ability to connect employers with authors. Therefore, although Byline's algorithm will always base a user's feed off proximity rather than interests, employers will have the option of applying a filter tool to their search engine. This would allow them to narrow Byline’s content into a niche that aligns with their desire. It would work something like this:

• A hiring manager scouting an investigative journalist specialising in business for the New York Times may apply filters to their feed including finance, business, economics and fraud. The articles that appear would be written by authors who categorised their work using the same filters.

Industry events

The further I progressed with my degree the more I realised that solely finishing university would not land me a job as a journalist. I had to learn how to market myself. Like I said, you hear the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” a lot in my industry. Although, if you think about it, this is odd for an industry that holds objectivity in high regard. This aside, I realised strong personal connections would help me achieve what I wanted. 

I have been called the dad of my friend group, as despite their best efforts, I don’t get out of the house too often. However, on the rare occasion I do, it is often for an industry event. After I broke free from the discomfort of exaggerating the brilliance of my body of work to great journalists (who could potentially get me a job) something changed. No longer did I see networking as an uncanny means of career advancement, networking was rather an opportunity to receive advice from journalists with undeniably brilliant portfolios of work. Networking certainly is not for everyone, that’s why Byline exists, however, it would be ignorant of me to ignore how valuable these events are for professional development. I also understand that if you are anything like my past self, it is unlikely you will scour the internet to find one of these events, let alone RSVP for one. Therefore, Byline will dedicate a webpage listing the networking events closest to you. These could range from workshops and seminars to meetups at an inner-city pub. You don’t have to attend them, but knowing when, where and what the theoretical event entails, you just might.

Editing

Even the most skilled writers need an editor. Another set of eyes to proofread, copyedit and identify structural flaws hidden within a manuscript's plot. To address this, if requested, Byline will act as an intermediary between writer and editor, connecting those who wish to enhance the quality of their work with professionals yielding the expertise to do so. We want to ensure that every article published on Byline is at its highest potential. That said, we value the vision of our writers, so they too will play a role in the subbing process.

The idea is to exchange drafts between the author and the editor. The editor would adjust each manuscript with consideration of their provided style guide. To ensure the vision remains intact, using track changes, manuscripts stop traversing between author and editor only once a structural, grammatical and syntaxial consensus is met.

Regulation

Byline is unlike Twitter; you cannot publish a thought in a matter of seconds. Instead, each post uploaded by an author will first have to bypass Byline’s editorial team. The team will monitor the content for appropriateness and plagiarism. Byline will take content control very seriously, ensuring all articles are free of extremist ideologies and prejudice, to name a few red flags, before they are published. If any content goes against Byline’s guidelines, it will not be uploaded. Instead, it will be sent to the author's private inbox from the Byline team, explaining the issues related to the content and what aspects of the article must be changed. 

Conclusion

Byline is like a book without a cover; only the content can be judged. It is a movement towards recognition of talent rather than status. It is a means for authors to explore their unique creativity and publish material they would not dare to without an alias. Byline is a platform that offers those without social confidence, or those who do not want to expose themselves publicly, a fair chance.

Although Byline understands the value of networking, the company hopes connections will not be the sole means of employment. Byline does all it can to eliminate social anxieties and provide the unheard with a creative space to thrive either publicly or anonymously. It streamlines opportunities for creative writers and allows journalists to explore their opinions through anonymous writing.

Therefore, Byline hopes to redefine how talent is discovered. By exposing employers to writers who do not dominate their LinkedIn feed, Byline will ensure everybody working within the writing world has a fair go at employment.

Together we can level the playing field, separate art from the artist and champion talent, not status.